Friday, March 29, 2024

Rapid Business Planning: An Essential Ingredient for Business Success

Shrinking business cycles make old ways of business planning obsolete and ineffective. Consumer preferences and markets are changing rapidly. The utility of the Internet along with breath-taking advancements in technology have made it possible to shrink product development and testing cycles from years to months or even weeks in some cases. In today’s web-enabled economy, speed is king: the first to market often enjoys competitive advantage over its peers and can enjoy market dominance.

Rapid business planning is a must in today’s competitive market space. Solopreneurs just don’t have the time or the interest to do it the old way and solopreneurs and larger companies alike find the old way isn’t fast enough to stay competitive. As important as rapid business planning is to the equation, the solution must extend beyond the planning phase to rapid execution and management to be effective.

Therefore, rapid business planning is built on the premise that effective, actionable business plans all answer five questions:

  1. What are we building?
  2. What are we known for?
  3. What will we measure?
  4. How will we grow our business this year?
  5. What is the work to be done?

Focusing on these five questions keeps the process simple, succinct, and lays the foundation for alignment, another key ingredient all successful businesses enjoy. Can you and your employees answer these questions in three minutes or less? Are your answers consistent?

As we rapidly approach a new year perhaps you should consider these questions. Better yet, sign up for my complimentary mini course, “5 Steps to a Better Business.” Just fill out the form on the right and for the next 5 days you’ll get 5 valuable lessons in your inbox each day. Taking less than 20 minutes each day to read and respond to the lesson material you’ll have the basis for an actionable business to guide you to a success year!

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